This second edition of the I Programmer book for those wanting to break into the Android app market is fully updated for Android Studio 2.3. Programming an Android app is an attractive proposition, as Android increasingly dominates the global smartphone market, meaning many potential users. In Android Programming: Starting With An App  Mike James shows you how common tasks are done using Android Studio, and explains why they are done in a particular way. 

Author: Mike James

Publisher: I/O Press
Date: March 2017
Pages: 288
ISBN: 978-1871962512
Print: 187196251X
Audience: Would-be Android developers
Level: Beginner/Intermediate

Second editions don’t usually follow first editions quite so closely, but Google’s Android Studio is a moving target that is moving very fast. 
In this edition the main change is the promotion, in Android Studio 2.3, of the ConstraintLayout to be the default layout. The early chapters have been revised to take account of this and a new chapter dedicated to the use of the ConstraintLayout has been inserted. The chapters following this are subject only to minor changes to keep up-to-date.

• Getting started with Android Studio
• Activity and User Interface
• Building a Simple UI
• Android Events
• Basic Controls
• Working with Layouts
• NEW The Constraint Layout
• Programming the UI
• Menus - Toolbar
• Menus - Context and Popup
• Resources
• Bitmap Graphics
• Life Cycle of an Activity
• Spinners
• Pickers
• ListView

There are plenty of examples in this book but they are deliberately simple, stripped down to their bare minimum to let you see what is essential. It isn’t a complete treatment of everything Android. Instead if focuses on the things you need to know to write an app, in particular creating the user interface (UI) because this is what you spend most of your time working on even if the app in question is sophisticated. In this book you will find out how to build an app with a single Activity and a UI, a good foundation for further Android programming.

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